Leveson's Media Guardians

In the name of regulating the press, he'd protect the politicians.

Updated Nov. 30, 2012 12:01 a.m. ET

After a year-long inquiry, nearly nine months of testimony and hundreds of witnesses, Lord Justice Brian Leveson has delivered his verdict on the British press. In a report that runs to 1,987 pages, Judge Leveson calls for statutory press regulation that he insists isn't statutory regulation. It goes downhill from there.

Mr. Leveson describes as "voluntary independent self-regulation" a system whereby the press's behavior would be policed by a board whose majority is "independent of the press." To ensure this, the board would be appointed by another board, which "should include at least one person with a current understanding and experience of the press," but "should include no more than one current editor" of a covered publication.

Judge Leveson declines to explain how the board that appoints the board should get appointed. Instead, he defaults to that old journalistic standby, the passive voice: The appointment panel "should be appointed in an independent, fair and open way." Well, splendid. Perhaps even he sensed that these successive layers of insulation were veering closer to self-parody than self-regulation.

This new regulator—controlled by non-journalists and non-editors—would set and enforce standards of press behavior. This would include dictating how newspapers should make apology and redress when they are found to have violated those standards. It would have the power to levy fines up to £1 million, or 1% of a paper's revenue, whichever is less.

Newspapers themselves would pay for the cost of this new body, including the costs of those who bring complaints, except in cases where the complaints are found to be "frivolous or vexatious." Judge Leveson doesn't give his new board a name, but we suggest the Voluntary Independent Press Regulator, or VIPER, for short.

Newspapers are supposed to submit to the jurisdiction of VIPER voluntarily. But in case they don't, Judge Leveson has a solution: He proposes a new law that would create a presumption of recklessness or negligence by any paper that did not sign up to his voluntary system of self-regulation by the independent board of VIPER.

This would expose newspapers that did not submit to VIPER to "exemplary" damages in any civil case against them. Judge Leveson would also make it much more difficult for non-VIPER papers to recover costs, even if they prevailed against a litigant in court.

This non-voluntary voluntary self-regulation by others is surely the worst idea in Judge Leveson's tome, but not the only bad one by a long stretch. We're still slogging through the almost 2,000 pages—the judge could use an editor—but one peculiar preoccupation is his recommendations for greater transparency. In order to expose the dealings of the press with politicians, Judge Leveson suggests that politicians track and report their interactions with journalists and newspaper proprietors.

He doesn't go as far as to suggest that every conversation be logged. He reserves that level of detail for newspaper owners. But even a more general collation of media contacts would led to less access and thus have the perverse result of shielding the government from media scrutiny. In the name of regulating the media, he'd further protect the politicians.

Mr. Leveson concluded his public remarks Thursday—at an event for the press at which he took no questions—by asking, "Who will guard the guardians?" It's an age-old question. David Cameron later told the Commons that he's wary of the judge's call for legislation to enshrine his proposals into law, but that he'd like to see the industry set up a more effective self-regulator themselves. This half-a-loaf Leveson also isn't needed.

The ultimate judges of the media anywhere are not some mythical wise and just guardians. In a free society, which Britain still purports to be, the real guardians are media consumers and the courts. The press is not now beyond scrutiny or accountability, as the reaction to the News of the World hacking scandal that prompted the Leveson inquiry has shown. News Corp. (which also owns this newspaper) closed down the 168-year-old paper and is paying a fearsome price in damaged reputation and legal and settlement costs.

The British press is in many ways the envy of the world, and its freedom is crucial to keeping Britain free. It is unruly, sometimes unreliable, and has even on occasion crossed the line into criminality. Not everything it publishes is admirable; some of it may be inexcusable. But that is for readers, advertisers and, when laws are broken, for the courts to judge.

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